He had every reason to be skeptical, and he was. Here was this unproven workaholic, sequestering himself in his hotel room, revealing no outward sign of joy after a victory, relentlessly pressing forward, one game to the next.
Don Chaney did not know what to make of Jeff Van Gundy.
“I used to really be concerned with him,” Chaney said.
It was difficult not to wonder about Van Gundy, nearly impossible not to speculate how long of a shelf-life this diminuitive, baggy-eyed technician would have as the head coach of the Knicks.
Chaney, who arrived in the NBA when Van Gundy was six years old, figured his much younger boss needed to unwind, needed to turn off the VCR and put aside his game tapes for one night, or at least one hour. But on the road, Chaney and the Knicks’ other top assistant, Brendan Malone, were never able to coax Van Gundy out of his room and into a dinner date.
“No, he doesn’t go out much,” Malone recalled recently. “I don’t ever recall him ever going out at all. He spends all his time on the road in his room watching tape. He’s the only guy I know who does it that way. That’s Jeff’s style.”
Style or obsession? Chaney admits back in 1995, when he first encountered Van Gundy, he was not sure.
“He used to always make the statement, ‘I can never enjoy a win,'” Chaney said. “I’ve been around long enough to know you’ve got to set aside some time for that enjoyment. But he’s a different breed of guy. He doesn’t allow himself to relax.
“Last year, everybody was talking that Jeff was going to be fired. Sometimes when the pressure’s on like that, and arrows are coming at you at all angles, sometimes you got to have some kind of release valve. Everybody has their own method of escaping, and I was concerned with him.”
And now?
“What I really like about Jeff is what you see is what you get,” Chaney said. “There is no phoniness about the guy, not at all. Jeff is unique. He’s that one pure character that it doesn’t matter how much money or fame he gets, he’s not going to change. It confuses a lot of people, because they can’t understand. A lot of people think it’s all pretense, but no; he is what he is.”
What he is, at the moment, is entrenched as the successful Knicks coach, guiding a club leading its first-round playoff series 2-0, poised to finish off the Raptors, at the helm of a team that certainly appears capable of making a return to the NBA Finals.
By now, the cast of characters on the court is familiar, but off the floor, the Knicks have been a model of consistency with a coaching staff that is recognized as one of the most cohesive and best-prepared in the league.
Van Gundy, flanked by a respected ex-player and coach in Chaney and a long-time NBA assistant and basketball lifer in Malone, has the luxury of stability with his first lieutenants, who have both been with him since 1996-97, his first full season as head coach. Chaney arrived a year earlier as part of Don Nelson’s staff and was retained by Van Gundy when Nelson was fired. The two assistants (Chaney is 54, Malone 58)are both considerably older and more experienced than the 38-year old Van Gundy, but the relationship works.
Malone, who has worked for Hubie Brown, Rick Pitino, Chuck Daly and George Karl, says, “Jeff Van Gundy is the hardest- working coach I’ve ever been associated with in the 14 years I’ve been in the league.”
The work is the reason Van Gundy has a following. He is smart enough to surround himself with respected assistants, but that doesn’t mean he’ll change his stripes and let his guard down. The dinner invitations from Chaney and Malone, even with Van Gundy’s newfound security based on his contract extension, continue to be declined.
“I didn’t do it as an assistant, it’s just my personality,” Van Gundy said. “Some guys bring books to read, some guys take a jog. I don’t do dinner on the road much. We work together very closely, we’re around each other all the time.”
Based on their age and experience, Chaney and Malone are valued confidants who say they feel needed and appreciated, even if at times, especially during games, it seems as if Van Gundy drifts into a coaching world of his own.
“If there’s a perception that I don’t lean on ’em, that’s like so far from the truth,” Van Gundy said.
When a timeout is called, many staffs around the league first huddle away from the bench before the head coach presents what is presumed to be a consensus opinion. The Knicks’ staff does not huddle. Instead, Van Gundy sits in front of his players, in silence as he gathers his own thoughts, and then delivers the message.
This is no slight, say the assistants.
“If we see something that we feel Jeff doesn’t see, Jeff gives us that freedom to speak out,” Chaney said. “I don’t see there’s a necessity every time out to huddle. What are you going to talk about?”
Chaney says it is easy to put his trust in Van Gundy, even though it was Chaney who won two titles as a defensive stopper with the Celtics, while his boss was merely a small-college point guard. It helps that Van Gundy looks out for his assistants, insisting that they never enter the final year of their contract. That is not standard operating procedure around the league.
“I respect him a great deal,” Chaney said, “because a lot of guys who haven’t played the game, they understand the game, to a point. Of all the guys I’ve worked with there’s only a few guys who have gotten to the point Jeff is.”
Just don’t ask him to dinner.